The Franschhoek of France – a surprisingly Afrikaans corner of the French countryside

Biltong from Thierry Guillemin. (Photo: Marita van der Vyver)

By Marita Van der Vyver

6 Sep 2024

There are many reasons (not all of them South African) to visit the rural Creuse department in France. Café Vincent, a seasonal pop-up restaurant now run by a dynamic duo originally from Mzansi and Kiwi Land, is the latest attraction.

Boussac is probably the only town in France where you shouldn’t speak Afrikaans – or even English with a South African accent – if you don’t want to bump into your compatriots. Especially in summer, when the narrow streets and ancient squares sometimes sound more like Franschhoek than like a French corner of the New Aquitaine region.

If Franschhoek is Ground Control for wannabe Frenchies in South Africa, then Boussac is where Major Tom steps out of his capsule into la France profonde, or “deep France”. In this small town with a population of about a thousand people, no fewer than 25 South African families have bought houses. Most of these are holiday homes used mainly in summer, but some owners who live here semi-permanently have had to face the two biggest challenges for any South African – learning to speak proper French and braving the harsh winters of the region. Hard to say which one is more frightening.

Charmed

“The revenge of the Huguenot descendants”, as we jokingly call this phenomenon, was started by Louis Jansen van Vuuren and Hardy Olivier when they bought and renovated the beautiful La Creuzette château two decades ago. In the following years scores of South African visitors have been so charmed by what seems like a fairy-tale lifestyle that they also wanted a piece of the Boussac cake. Not the same cake, hopefully, that Queen Marie Antoinette famously advised the peasants to eat shortly before she lost her head.

Meanwhile, Louis and Hardy have sold the La Creuzette guest house, although it is still managed by a South African – the very capable DeVerra Auret who joined them as an intern many years ago – so the Saffer connection stays strong.

Le Store, the lifestyle boutique that Louis opened across from the 13th-century church of Sainte Anne, has also been sold to a South African entrepreneur, along with the adjoining art gallery and pop-up café. Nowadays Louis and Hardy live in a renovated hunting lodge about 20 minutes drive from Boussac, far enough from the madding crowds of francophiles, yet still close enough not to lose touch.

Café Vincent used to be a vegan eatery in its previous life, since Louis had become a committed vegan and published the award-winning cook book There’s a Vegan on my Verandah, but in its present reincarnation it caters for a broader market, offering healthy Mediterranean-style food with multicultural twists and surprises.

Together they make magic

Anita Moir (left) and Lynn Chaulieu in Café Vincent’s kitchen. Right: fondu creusois at Le Grand Café des Sports. (Photos: Marita van der Vyver)

This café, with its bright yellow walls, sunflower paintings and obvious reference to the great Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh, is the reason I travelled to Boussac from my solitary corner of France where I can speak Afrikaans in the street without fear of being answered by anyone. The downside is that I mostly talk to the trees, as in that old song, or to the cows, sheep and donkeys I pass along the way, precisely because no one else speaks my mother tongue.

So you could say I was drawn to Boussac by a desire to chat, in Afrikaans, to my dear friend Lynn Chaulieu, who has lived in France for most of her life and reached out to me with enormous generosity when I first arrived here. Lynn has recently been roped in from her corner of the French countryside to run the latest version of Café Vincent until it closes again in autumn. And Lynn being Lynn, a true boer maak ’n plan kind of girl, she quickly convinced Anita Moir, a New Zealand-born chef and caterer dividing her time between homes in London and rural France, to join her in this adventure.

Together they make magic. I watched them with growing admiration on a busy Thursday in peak season, feeding a South African TV crew that was shooting a lifestyle series hosted by Anet Pienaar-Vosloo, catering for the opening night of a Madiba-inspired exhibition in the art gallery next to the café, and serving brunch, lunch, cakes and coffee to random customers dropping in from the weekly market on the main square of Boussac. Smiling, professional, never losing their cool.

Ever-changing menu

The fact that all 13 episodes of the TV series Mooi, about South African houses in France, were shot in and around Boussac, is perhaps the best indication of just how many South Africans are now living the French dream in this little corner of France. The fact that house prices in the Creuse are officially the least expensive of the 101 departments in France obviously adds to the attraction when you have to convert your dwindling rand into euros.

Café Vincent is only open on Thursday (market day), Friday and Saturday, when Lynn and Anita stay in Boussac, allowing them to return to their homes outside the Creuse department for the rest of the week. Although this doesn’t mean that they’re ladies of leisure during the remaining four days.

On Tuesdays and Wednesdays they shop for ingredients and plan the ever-changing menu according to the fresh produce they can source. Anita prepares some of Thursday’s food in her own kitchen and bakes the delicious cakes and desserts that she takes to Boussac.

While in Boussac they also offer tempting takeaway food from the deli menu to all the holiday makers who don’t want to spend too many sunny hours cooking in hot kitchens. When I was there, this menu included Moroccan-style couscous; potatoes “slightly curried”; garlic and olive chicken; courgette, sweet potato and flaxseed. A previous week’s menu had bacon and egg pie, Greek spanakopita, green salad with Indian raita (garlic, cucumber and yoghurt), and Italian lasagna made with 12-hour slow-cooked beef.

Mouthwatering selection of cakes

Café Vincent’s cool garden. (Photos: Marita van der Vyver)

There are also cheese platters, with or without charcuterie, and a truly mouthwatering selection of cakes. I tried some chocolate fudgy squares that I can still taste when I close my eyes and concentrate. If I return before the restaurant closes at the end of the season I might remember the taste until next summer.

But what do you do, you might well ask, if you visit Boussac on a day when Café Vincent is closed and there is no market with fresh produce and local cheeses and gourmet goodies on the main square?

Luckily Café Vincent is not the only joint in town where you can get a good meal. The perfectly unpretentious Grand Café des Sports on the market square, for instance, is a sports bar with a big TV screen, a separate and much calmer dining room, and dozens of outdoor tables and chairs for people watching (particularly popular on market days), where I ordered a traditional fondu creusois after a long day of travelling.

Originally this was a fondue of melted mountain cheese from the region served with potatoes en robe de champs (“in their field dress”), or in the more prosaic English, unpeeled cooked potatoes. However, it has long since evolved into a casserole of melted Camembert and a huge heap of crispy frites. With a little salad on the side, just to make you feel less guilty about such a decadent meal, even if you only look at the salad while dipping another frite into the irresistible pool of pale yellow cheese.

Honey afiçionado

Lots and lots of blueberry thrills, left, and even blueberry honey, right. (Photos: Marita van der Vyver)

The next day I returned to the Grand Café for a pre-lunch drink at an outside table and discovered a delicious blueberry juice from a local farm. So of course I convinced my French partner that we had to drive past this farm on our way home, and he went completely crazy in the farm shop, buying blueberry juice, blueberry syrup to mix with water, blueberry jam and the cherry on top, or in this case the berry on top, a jar of thick, dark blueberry honey. He happens to be a honey afiçionado who starts twitching whenever he encounters an unknown variety of honey, much like a passionate birdwatcher spotting a rare bird.

We also bought a kilo of the fattest, sweetest myrtilles, as blueberries are named in French, we had ever tasted. Apparently they freeze really well, but at the rate we’ve been eating myrtilles since our return from Boussac, I doubt there’ll be any left to freeze.

Biltong from Thierry Guillemin. (Photo: Marita van der Vyver)

Yes, we found our thrill on Boussac’s blueberry hill, but the biggest surprise of our foodie outing was the biltong we discovered at the local butchery. You don’t expect a rural French butcher called Thierry Guillemin to be making biltong, do you? Or rather, you wouldn’t expect it anywhere else in France, but one of the South African contingents in Boussac had provided the recipe – and voilà, we were lucky enough to buy the last piece of biltong left in the butchery.

Just one more reason, we decided, to visit the Creuse valley again. Who knows, next time we might even find bobotie or boerewors? DM

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